Monologue For a Snake

A Poem by Molly Cara

SNAKE: It was night. It was blacker than frostbitten skin. I coiled around her feet. I offered up the apple, saying, “Eve it isn't sin, and it isn't poison. Fruit was made to be tasted.” So she took it. She bit into it. She swallowed and her eyes rolled back, like she was having a vision of God. Of course, that happened all the time when the universe was young. We all had visions of God all day. It was like having a radio in your car, where you couldn't change the channel, and you couldn't turn it off. Anyway God appeared in His pajamas, and He said, “Eve I trusted you.” And Eve said, “If you trusted me, why did you test me? Why did you plant this tree?” Then she was gone, into exile. People wonder what happened to the garden. After Adam and Eve left, there was nobody to tend to it. The two of them used to run around the fields, planting things and naming things. You think God did all that? God was too busy; I think he was writing his memoir. So Adam and Eve did most of it. Without them, Eden was a wasteland. It crumpled, as all great empires do.